IL's Summer School: Geneseo defenseman Peter White

Note: This is the third in IL's 'Summer School' series detailing the summer jobs/internships of collegiate lacrosse players. To read the first piece on Army's Bill Henderson, click here. To read the second on Bellarmine's Tyler Mattingly, click here.

In theory, any summer job/internship SHOULD be of the type that not only fills the hours, but also teaches you some new tricks and helps you get along in whatever career you would like to pursue upon graduation.

In certain rare instances, you can also find one that helps the world around you, and Peter White has been able to do just that, working in New Orleans as a GIS specialist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the cleanup efforts in the Gulf of Mexico surrounding the Deepwater Horizon/BP oil spill.

"I was working in West Virginia at the Fish and Wildlife National Conservations Training Center, and somebody in my office asked for my resume," says White, who graduated from SUNY Geneseo in 2009 but is contemplating returning for graduate school. "Two days later, I got the call that they needed me down there. I had to give up my spot in the summer lacrosse league, but it was a great opportunity."

White is one of thousands of specialists that have descended upon the gulf region to try to stem the disastrous spill, which has been venting crude oil into the water for over two months. Various government agencies and BP itself are operating out of Unified Command in New Orleans, where the various agencies try to work together to limit the impact on the environment.

White's speciality is Geographic Information System maps - basically a map with whatever information that the command needs for their days' work.

"Basically every morning, I get the new data from field teams and enter that into the mapping system so that we have the most current information available to everybody out in the field," he says. "We have observation teams and flights out of Florida and Alabama, so whenever we have new information we try to update everything.

"They need maps for a lot of different things - where the boats are, the latest extent of the oil - basically whatever they need to know, we make sure we generate a map for them."

White, who moved to New Orleans for the internship in mid-June, generally works from about 5AM to 6PM, after which he has some time to get out and see his newly-adopted city. He is staying in a hotel right next to the Superdome in downtown, and has enjoyed the opportunity to check out the various neighborhoods and scenes that make New Orleans one of America's most famous cities - though he hasn't been able to spend too much time out and about owing to the early alarm.

In addition to the benefits of working towards a career that he wants to eventually have, White has said the experience of being a part of such a huge project - one that earlier this month gave him the opportunity to meet Vice President Joe Biden on a site visit - has been an eye-opening experience.

"In some ways, my other internships were really pointless compared to this one," he says. "I never really watched CNN before or anything, but now I'm paying attention to things because I want to know what they're saying about what we're doing down here. A lot of people really have no idea how huge of an operation it is.

"It's hectic, but everything goes by quick - you're doing stuff all the time. My old eight-hour shift went by way slower than the 12 hours I'm working most days here."